The UK did not need a second invitation from George W. Bush to come roaring
back to the Middle East to Yasser Arafats rescue  with Javier Solanas
European Union outfit riding in on its back.

The initial arrangement was cautious: The British would arrive in the innocuous,
limited form of a joint Anglo-American guard to make sure that the six Palestinians,
whose extradition Israel demanded as its condition for releasing Arafat, stayed
in their Palestinian jail. Once they were handed over to their international
custodians, the Israel siege tanks pinning them and Yasser Arafat down in his
Ramallah headquarters would roll back, Arafat would be free to travel and the
US would begin hauling itself out of the Palestinian-Israeli mire.

Its place would be filled by Europeans, led by the UK.

To get the ball rolling, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was first bulldozed
Sunday, April 28, into driving through his government the initial formula of
an American-British guard for the six wanted men: the four PLFP killers of Tourism
Minister Rehavam, the PLFP Secretary Ahmad Saadat who dispatched them, and Arafats
financial director Fuad Shobaki, who organized funds for the Karin-A arms smuggling
venture and terrorist operations.

According to DEBKAfiles sources in Washington and Israel, Sharon, by bowing
to Bushs insistence on this first step, has dug a deep pit at Israels
feet and set the region on the path to seismic geo-strategic shifts. Nothing
can now stop the Europeans, led by the eager British, from restoring Yasser
Arafats standing as Palestinian leader and reconstructing Palestinian
security bodies, the very infrastructure that Israels military painstakingly
knocked down in its month-long counter-terror sweep through Palestinian West
Bank towns.

This single decision goes a long way to reversing Israels military achievements
in fighting off Arafats Intifada terror offensive. In some ways, it turns
the clock back, rendering almost irrelevant the 774 Israeli victims who died
 and ten times that number injured - in the years of Palestinian terror
following the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords that brought Arafat into the
country.
The Israeli prime minister and a majority of ministers were swayed by two arguments.
One, the US presidents national security adviser Condoleeza Rices
claim to the prime ministers adviser Danny Ayalon, that Israels
refusal would undercut the Bush administrations entire Middle East strategy,
and obstruct the US military offensive against Iraq, as well as its war on global
terror as a whole. Israel would not escape blame for upsetting Washingtons
plans.

The second argument came in the form of President Bushs non-specific commitment
to stand by Israel.
During his telephone assault on Sharon Saturday and Sunday, April 27 and 28,
Bush made two things clear, which the prime minister refrained from sharing
with his cabinet colleagues:

One , that the US would supervise the restoration of Arafats fortunes
and reconstruction of Palestinian security services from afar: the British would
be in charge of the fieldwork.

Two, the British were brought in to satisfy Arafat.

Sharon did disclose to the cabinet that the senior British staffer on the spot
would be Alistair Crooke, a former high-ranking MI6 man and European Unions
Javier Solanas representative in Jerusalem. Washingtons decision
to move into a backstage supervisory role was not revealed. Bush could have
retained a more active share in the project by sending retired general Anthony
Zinni back to the region. This was not suggested by the United States or Israel.

Not letting the grass grow, the British advance party of security experts
quietly arrived Monday night, 24 hours after the Israeli government decision.
Their first job is to deal with the technicalities for the transfer of the six
wanted men to a jail in Palestinian territory  presumably the British-built
prison facility in Jericho. The four sentenced assassins are less of a problem
than the Shobaki and Saadat who have not been tried for their crimes. Israel
is demanding that they too be locked up in prison. A solution remains to be
worked out.

The British trio signifies the onset of a complex gambit that furthers the Bush
administrations desire to throw off the Israel-Palestinian encumbrance
and mute its Middle East involvement in favor of building up Central Asian assets.
Washington is handing the Middle East standard over to its British surrogate.

This gambit seriously damages Israel.

Sharon was duly warned more than once from the Oval Office to hold his horses
in Operation Defense Shield, to pull Israeli forces out of Palestinian towns
and turn to diplomacy  or else Washington would go its own way. The Americans
signaled their intentions to Sharon shortly after Israel launched its massive
drive into Palestinian cities, in response to the Palestinian Passover suicide
rampage against Israel civilians.

The signals sharpened before and during the Saudi crown prince Abdullahs
weekend stay at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The Israeli prime minister failed to heed the signals, too single-mindedly engrossed
in waging war against Arafats terrorist infrastructure. As a result, he
has been lurching in the last ten days from one diplomatic contretemps to the
next, squandering hard-won strategic assets in the process, with the following
consequences:

A. The grand US-Israeli plan for cutting Arafat down and consigning him to the
Gaza Strip has been tossed aside, together with its companion blueprint for
establishing self-rule on the West Bank under the auspices of the Kingdom of
Jordan. The blow sustained by Israel  in no small measure under Saudi
influence  has also hit Abdullah II of Amman, who based his fundamental
policies on a strategic partnership with the United States and Israel. The Saudi
crown prince achieved two strokes in Crawford: he got the Israeli army out of
Ramallah and blocked Jordans reinstatement on the West Bank.

B. In contrast, The Palestinian authority will be reinstated - possibly on different
lines with fresh faces, according to British and the European concepts. Arafat
will be re-confirmed as top man.

C. The Palestinian security agencies, whose primary function was to mastermind
terror, will be rebuilt too by the same hands. The Americans are prepared to
admit off the record that the CIA failed abysmally in its efforts to create
effectively functioning security agencies following the conclusion of the Oslo
accords. The British will certainly pursue their own ideas and install their
own agents in the restored bodies.

D. The British teams taking over in Palestinian-ruled territory will function
on three levels:
The Foreign Offices Arab-Palestinian experts, security personnel
- who are actually officers of the British secret service, MI6, and former commandos
trained in guerrilla and counter-terror tactics.

E. Those three groups will become the kernel of a larger international force
made up mostly of European intelligence and military officers, to which American
advisers will be attached as supervisors. This arrangement means the termination
of the familiar trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian security coordination commissions
that were mostly moribund anyway. Their infrastructure will be handed over to
the British.

F. Israel will eventually have to re-address its security and political concerns
with the Palestinians to the British Foreign Office instead of the State Department
in Washington. Many Israelis will rub their eyes in disbelief at the return
of the Union Jack, the Foreign Office and MI6 to Palestine  and even more
at the notion that Ariel Sharon let it happen.

It is not a happy prospect for Israelis, who are perfectly aware of the pro-Arab
winds blowing consistently from London since 1948. Yasser Arafats installment
as head of an independent Palestinian state has always been a key policy goal
for the British government and its intelligence agencies.

What remains to be seen is how Arafat will use his fresh lease of life. Will
he entrap the British in his toils as he did the Americans, making them the
unwilling sponsors of his terrorist activities? Or will he reward Britain for
standing by him by setting up an Anglo-Palestinian front against Israel?"